I witnessed this as a player today, and am curious about the proper ruling:

AP controls a Dark Confidant. During their upkeep, they point to Dark Confidant and announce “trigger.” They take the top card of the library and put it directly in their hand without revealing. NAP calls judge.

The library is completely random prior. We'll assume no Fraud, as the AP said he just honestly forgot Dark Confidant said “reveal” (it was turn 3 of the game).

This was discussed on the IRC, and the common conclusion is that this is a GPE - GRV (since FTR no longer exists). However, there was a split on using the upgrade path to a GL, or just sticking with a Warning.

(The ruling given was GPE - DEC and a GL).

>I witnessed this as a player today, and am curious about the proper ruling:

>
>AP controls a Dark Confidant. During their upkeep, they point to Dark Confidant and announce “trigger.” They take the top card of the library and put it directly in their hand without revealing. NAP calls judge.
>
>The library is completely random prior. We'll assume no Fraud, as the AP said he just honestly forgot Dark Confidant said “reveal” (it was turn 3 of the game).
>
>This was discussed on the IRC, and the common conclusion is that this is a GPE - GRV (since FTR no longer exists). However, there was a split on using the upgrade path to a GL, or just sticking with a Warning.
>
>(The ruling given was GPE - DEC and a GL).
>
>——————————————————————————–


Wow - that's a “fun” one.

I'm not going to provide an {O} on this, because - well, as one colleague put it, it's a whole new “level of botching”.  Like most corner cases, this is more likely to come up in a judge's imagination than in reality - but, of course, reality often exceeds our wildest imagination!

It seems there's three possible rulings, each with reasonable justification:
GPE - DEC and GL (as was given at the time)
GPE - GRV, with upgrade (thus, no remedy required)
GPE - GRV, no upgrade

In that last case, we have to figure out a remedy; I'd be inclined to handle it like the “normal” DC-botching, where they simply miss the trigger: put the trigger on the stack and have them resolve it - correctly, this time! - and record the GPE-GRV Warning you already decided on.  I can also see putting a random card back on top of the library, then correctly resolving the DC trigger by revealing it (although that feels an awful lot like randomly revealing a card from hand - we'd have to be very careful with the message to the players with that remedy).

In summary - and this much is {O} - there are going to be things that players do that just don't fit neatly into our policies and rules.  You are judges, use your best judgment (while sticking as close as possible to the spirit of those policies & rules).

Thanks - Scott Marshall, L5, Denver

Edited Scott Marshall (Nov. 1, 2012 03:39:46 PM)

I might be missing something here, I don't understand what makes this a corner case. Wasn't this exact scenario in the IPG when FTR was still in it? It feels like a very common occurrence given how often this example is used.

Then again, I haven't been able to find the backstory as to why FTR was removed, so maybe there's an aspect here I'm unclear on.

Although it was an example of FtR, it rarely (never) happened in real
life. People didn't acknowledge the trigger and then forget to
reveal. They just forgot the trigger and drew for their turn. So it
really is a corner case.

On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 4:47 PM, Adam Zakreski
<forum-1650@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:

Is that why FTR was removed?

Originally posted by Adam Zakreski:

Is that why FTR was removed?

Somewhat. Shawn is saying that this specific example with failing to reveal with Dark Confidant is a corner case.

The reason the specific penalty was removed was because Failure to Reveal was rarely given in at all. One of the more likely situations to occur would be with face down creature at the end of a game. We don't have them in Standard and they aren't exactly tearing it up in Modern, Legacy or Vintage. The other possibility that does exist in all formats is when a player searches for a card, should reveal it before putting it in their hand but does not.

In the end, it works well with having this be a GRV with upgrade as opposed to its own classification.

Toby talked a bit about this, in his Sept 20th post to the Judge List.  Basically, we got rid of FtR because we could - simplifying the document without losing its functionality.


Thanks - Scott Marshall, L5, Denver

Thanks guys.

Thank you for the responses. I didn't realize quite how corner case this was (it sure sparked great discussion among the IRC!).